Ms. Jones' Blog

May Flowers!

Yes, April's showers have brought us May flowers!  We have been working very hard keeping the front school raised beds watered and lovely.  We also have our own container garden outside our classroom windows that we take care of.  But best of all, we help Mrs. Douglas' class keep up the schools Sustainable Garden beds off to the side of the school!  There is a pollination garden, a fruit garden, and a vegetable garden!  They all look wonderful!  We helped to plant, measure, discuss, learn the parts, etc.  The kids love this activity!

We have done some very exciting magnetism and heat experiments this past week and we continue our Language Arts work on the story elements.  We continue our work in Math in the areas of time, money, addition, graphing, etc.

Don't expect any homework packets throught the end of school.  Just keep reading at home with your kids!  We will have summer packets to send home if you'd like to keep a routine going and keep the kids sharp over break.  They've all come so very far this far and I've enjoyed them tremendously!

These next 9 days will be filled with light review and finishing up a couple of last minute science and social studies concepts.  Most importantly, we'll have a lot of fun!

Please be sure to send any library books back in as soon as possible.  Also, remember the last 2 days of school are a Wed. & Thurs. May 23rd & 24th and they are both early release days!  These last 2 days the kids with have a Laughing Matters Assembley and a Magic Assembly.  We'll be saying good-bye and good luck to our 5th graders and Mrs. Hutnik, who is retiring in June!

Have a safe and fun summer!

Beth Jones

Spring Is Here!

News:

-Don't forget, only one week of school left before a week off for Spring Break!  I can tell everyone, especially the students, is looking very forward to a rest!  Enjoy the week of April 2nd off with family and friends!  We'll only have 35 more days left til Summer Break, after we return!

-Spring pictures are March 27th; group and individuals, if you choose.  Also there is a PTSA meeting @ 6pm followed by Game Night!

-March 30th is a Performing Arts field trip @ the school as well as an in-house science field trip with 3rd grade done by High Touch-High, Tech where we'll be doing science experiments for 90mins.!  We can't wait!  And thanks to Kennesaw Business Association for paying for this field trip for us!

What We're Learning:

-We continue our work in comprehension strategies in reading as well as writing lessons focused around the concept of writing text of appropriate length to retell/tell a story.  The students are continuing to do well with addition, money, graphing, and time.

-Our biggest changes have been in Social Studies and Science.  We have been working on Early American, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Explorers.  We will move to budgeting after Spring Break.  In Science, with Spring upon us, we have begun our own class garden in pots outside our window!  We will also keep up the raised beds under the carport infront of school once they are planted.  We have joined Mrs. Douglas' class in her grant project to the side of the school.  The grant project has afforded the entire school a sustainable garden!  We are working on a pollination bed, a vegetable bed, and a fruit bed.  Thanks to Karen McDuffie, grandmother of 3rd grader in Mrs. Christy Cook's class Abby Jones, for some generous plant donations!  Students will work, tend, learn, and harvest the bounty!  We learn so much this way and have so much more fun!  Also expect after break, to hear more about habitats, weathering, and rocks!

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments!

I also want you all to know how well your students did as I gathered their portfolios the 1st half of the school year!  Their portfolios are completed and shipped ready to be assessed!  You should feel proud of all their hard work!!!

Beth Jones

What are the Jones & Jones crew up to?

First of all, we can't thank you all enough for a fantastic Valentine's Day and Teacher Appreciation Week!  Your cards, candy, supplies, flowers, baked goods and goody bags to share, all made for a special week for the 2 Jones ladies and a terrific holiday for our wonderful class!

Our biggest class addition has been "America"!  We have begun discussing early America, the colonies, and explorers!  There will be some handy study aids put on display very soon on this material if you'd like to take a look next time you're by!  After we spend some time on Social Studies, we'll switch back to Science and study magnets, electricity, and Georgia habitats.  This will be great fun!

Our recent "Rock Candy" experiment, showed us what Science is all about; experiments don't always turn out the way you think and you have to try again.  We got the idea of phase changes, but came up short on "consumable" rock candy!  Oh, well, maybe next time!

Don't forget, we have a 3 day weekend coming up to celebrate Feb. 20th's Presidents' Day!  Enjoy your time together!

Beth Jones

What are we up to in Room 102!

Happy February!  I can't believe we are 106 days into this school year!  The time is really flying!  You should be so very proud of your students.  Since returning from Holiday break, they have been well tuned-in to their lessons in class.  They are able to discuss books we're reading, taking out important information from the text.  Their math skills are coming right along.  We continue working with place value, time, and especially addition skills.  We are now talking about the 3 phases of water in Science and important historic figures in Social Studies.  That goes along nicely with Black History Month!

Keep up the exceptional work on homework!  The kids are bringing in their work proudly each week!

Watch for daily communications home, weekly school communications on Thursdays, and keep in mind the 3 day weekend we have coming up to celebrate President's Day on February 20th!

Enjoy the Spring-like temperatures, but I am afraid we're about to see some true Winter weather soon!

Beth Jones

"The Cycle Continues"!

That's the Water Cycle we're talking about!  We are exploring how it is that the water we drink today can possibly be the same water that rained down on our dinosaur friends so very long ago!  Yuk, right?  But oh so cool!  We are witnessing evaporation and condensation in our classroom experiments and we're even going to try to read "invisible ink" written with lemon juice that doesn't reveal its message until the paper it is written on is ironed!  How neat is that?

We're still reading lots of great books and doing lots of math.  We've been concentrating on money since we returned from break.

Our field trip to Costco was so much fun!  We saw the bakery, a forklift in action, and stepped into a cooler.  The 80 inch flat screen tv was pretty cool to, but I think the best part was the food court!!!  All the students loved that!

Tune in next month for more fun facts!

Beth Jones

Happy 2012!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday break with your family and friends!  When we all return on Tuesday, January 10, 2012, you will find us very busy for our new year!

We will be finishing up some old assessments from before break.  Then, we get to learn about some really great new topics!  We'll be looking at magnets and the water cycle in Science, important people throughout history in Social Studies, we'll continue our time, money, and addition in math, and we'll keep up our daily reading with focus on comprehension strategies.

All the kids seem to like science experiments, so plan on some fun discussions over dinner when we start our new Science units!

Thanks for all of your homework support!  The kids seem so proud when they hand in their weekly work and I think it really helps keep them on task.  Don't worry about the holiday packets that were sent home.  We just sent them home incase you felt your child needed the structure or the practice; you do not have to turn those in.  Keep them for future work when you feel your child needs it!

Lastly, I know some of you may wonder why I do not send completed school work home daily.  I keep it in the file cabinet to use in their permanent portfolios.  However, you are welcome to view all their work at any time or have copies made.  I do need to keep all their work until the end of the year.

It's Officially Winter!

December 22, 2011

Welcome, officially to WINTER!  We just had a terrific holiday celebration with Mrs. Robert’s class today!  We had fun with craft centers making wonderful ice cream cone Christmas trees, jingle bell necklaces, angels with the kid’s faces on them, cookie decorating, bag decorating, and then we came into our room for refreshments!  Thank all of you who donated goodies and came to enjoy the festivities!  The veggies, dips, pretzels, cheese, cookies, and cupcakes with drinks were yummy!!!

Ms. Jones and I wish you and your families a very healthy and happy holiday and New Year!  We will see you all back here January 10^{th, 2012}.

We are winding up our unit in science on pollution and its impact on the environment.  We are also winding up our math unit on graphing, but we continue with time, money, and addition.  We are still reading daily with focus on story elements.  Please, when you read at home, discuss with your child who the characters are, what the setting is, and what the plot is.  If you want to dive deeper, talk about any conflicts that the book might pose and how the conflict is solved!

Beth Jones

Education Topics:
We are continuing our work with characters, setting, plot, conflicts, and comparing and contrasting these elements. This discussion is really helping the kids with their comprehension! We are also continuing our work on writing with our computer program of Classroom Suite!

In math, we are working with Base 10 strategies in place value, elapsed time, graphing, and addition. We are really enjoying our graphing activities as some of our 3rd grade friends are helping us to collect different data to graph!

We have been discussing animal adaptations like camouflage, migration, and hibernation. This week we will focus on our really fun salt dough map of the United States. We will be marking and painting special physical features all over the United States!

Keep reading!

Week of October 3rd

Education Topics For This Week:

• Language Arts:  We are working on character, setting, and plot for the books we read!  We read at least a book a day!  As you read at home, please talk about these same elements to reinforce what we are doing in class!

• Math:  We are working on addition with manipulatives right now.  Also we are going into a neighboring class to take a poll of favorite candy, then we'll return to our class to graph those results!  This will be a cool way to start our unit on graphing.  For our hands on activity we are going to sample apples this week and do a "taste test" to see which is our favorite, and then we'll graph those results!

• Social Studies:  We are working on map skills right now as we study the physical features of the United States.  The kids will be bringing home some "study sheets" to help them reinforce what we are doing in class.  Within 2 weeks, we will be making salt dough maps of the US then we'll be painting, molding, and labeling the different features!

Week of Sept. 26, 2011

We are currently working on pollution and animal adaptations in science.  We are learning about major land formations in the United States in social studies.

We are continually working on our writing skills and site word reading skills.  Please come by and see your child's "Adaptations" project in the hallway!  They look really great and each child wrote their own information about their animal on our Classroom Suites computer program!

Math is getting really fun with place values and 100 charts!

We really enjoy our specials times and our regular cooking each Thursday!

Don't forget individual pictures will be taken Sept. 27th.  You may purchase individual pictures by filling out the photo packets which were sent home.  These will be the  photos used for the yearbook, so all student pictures will be made.  You will have another chance for individual photos in the Spring.

Kick ball Tuesday Sept 19th

Our class had a great time in P.E. on Tuesday - we played kick ball!